Food and wagering: Ten boss Paul Anderson's plan for Melbourne Cup

The race that stops the nation is still nine months away but Network Ten chief executive Paul Anderson is already planning advertising and brand tie-ins with major shows across its network to ensure its $100 million investment in the Melbourne Cup pays off year-round.

Racing promotions have kicked off and Mr Anderson and his team expect two or three big integrations with major franchise and weekly shows in the coming months. There’s speculation one of these will be with cooking behemoth Masterchef’s 11th season, with food seen as a natural fit with events like horse racing, along with beverages, fashion and wagering.

“You can’t look at those four days [of racing] in isolation, we look across the year. Part of the investment in horse racing is that we’ve now got the premier horse racing carnival in the country, if not the world, and that gives us access to different advertising categories that we haven’t had access to before in that way. The wagering category is a good example,” Mr Anderson said.

“There are limits but that’s obviously very important, those four days ... for the likes of the food and beverage market, the wagering market,” he said.

After outbidding rival Seven West Media to secure the broadcast rights to the Melbourne Cup in September, Mr Anderson said Ten had its first editorial meeting about how to ensure coverage all year round within a fortnight. Ten has been criticised for paying too much for the 20-day horse racing festival from 2019 to 2023, which includes four days of live broadcasting. The price paid included cash and contra.

“We would hope that we wouldn’t lose [money on the deal],” Mr Anderson said.

“We’re setting our own targets and we’re really happy with where we are at the moment. It’s pretty easy to get distracted with external forces but now, because we’re part of the CBS Corporation, we just have a lot more confidence to do our own thing,” he said of the network's performance more broadly.

While he said it was simple to point to four days of revenue and four days of costs over the races themselves, it was the “things that go around it that actually make financial sense” such as brand integrations in shows. He has previously flagged bringing fashion into the mix.

As an example, he said that it could be a case of telling a wagering partner "if you want to be in a Melbourne Cup, you need to spend 50 per cent of your money with us across the rest of the year”.

Ten last had the rights to the Melbourne Cup for 24 years until 2001. The recent deal Ten signed excludes live vision streaming rights for Wagering Service Providers. Seven is set to air Group 1 racing from Flemington until June 2020.